Israel's Atomic Energy Commission posted a Web site on Sunday about the country's nuclear program, which has always been highly secretive, though the new site is limited to the most basic information and a few long-distance photos.
The introduction of the site came just two days before a visit by the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, who last week called for talks on a nuclear-free Middle East.
As noted on the new Web site (www.iaec.gov.il), the Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1952 by then-prime minister David Ben-Gurion.
Since then, Israel has tried to say as little as possible about its nuclear program. It has always refused to confirm or deny whether it possesses nuclear weapons, though various estimates have said the country has enough plutonium to make about 200 warheads.
In an interview last December with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, ElBaradei said he presumed that Israel had a nuclear arsenal.
The Web site notes that Israel has two nuclear research centers, including a nuclear reactor in the Negev Desert, outside the southern town of Dimona.
There is no reference to nuclear weapons on the Web posting, which says the Dimona facility is for "expanding and deepening basic knowledge of nuclear science and related fields and providing an infrastructure for the practical and economic utilization of atomic energy."
Some photos are of nondescript buildings, with bright flowers in the foreground. One shows what appears to be the silhouette of the dome-shaped Dimona reactor at sunset, from a great distance.
The Web site, in English and Hebrew, offer just a few pages of general information that is already common knowledge.
In May, Israel's equally secretive intelligence service, Mossad, posted its own Web site, which advertises for recruits.
While ElBaradei's two-day visit will focus attention on Israel's nuclear program, Israeli analysts say they see no possibility that it will lead Israel to change its policy of "strategic ambiguity."
"These policies have been followed by all prime ministers; they enjoy wide support in the Israeli body politic, and are well understood by Israel's allies," said Uzi Arad, director of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, outside Tel Aviv.
ElBaradei's visit is likely to cover a variety of civilian nuclear issues, like nuclear medicine and safety regulations, Arad said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS